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The Good Wife TV Show

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Extra Credit I chose to analyze episode 21 (In Sickness) of Season 2 of The Good Wife TV show. In this episode, a judge hears both sides on a liver transplant dispute between the hospital (defendant) and the victim (plaintiff), represented by big firm attorneys. The plaintiff was allegedly wrongfully removed from the top of the transplant list. The attorney for the hospital was then fired by her firm during the trial. She proceeded to go to the big firm attorneys that were on her opposite side and ask for them to be her attorneys, representing her in a wrongful discharge suit against her former law firm. The big firm accepted the case. The fired attorney disclosed several pieces of information from her firm to the firm now representing her, …show more content…

It is also important to consider that her firm was still representing that client in a pending litigation and confidentiality endures even after an attorney-client relationship ends. Further, at the end, when she is rehired by her former firm and she drops the big firm and the wrongful discharge claim, she makes it clear that she will break the rule of confidentiality again, by disclosing to her own firm what she learned from the big firm while she was unemployed. The same circumstances apply, so her doing so would constitute another violation of the same …show more content…

The rule on declining representation is represented by the big firm attorneys taking the fired attorney's case on the wrongful discharge claim against her former law firm. Correct application of the rule would have instead required that they decline to represent her because they took her as a client knowing that the representation will result in violation of professional conduct (such as the rules on conflicts and confidentiality). The rules on conflicts of interest and imputation of those conflicts are represented by the big firm attorneys who took on the fired attorney's case (who was their opposition just a few hours ago on a case that was still pending). Confidential information from the hospital's side was given to the big firm attorneys, that they used in the liver case. The attorneys for the hospital ask for the big firm to be discqualified for what happened. The judge asked afterwards if the fired attorney could keep those two cases separate, she answered yes, and the judge moved

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